Charlie (49 page)

‘I’ll go and ask him then,’ Charlie said. ‘If Andrew should come back while I’m gone, tell him to wait here for me, will you?’

‘I’ll have him hung, drawn and quartered by then,’ Carol joked. ‘If he is at John’s, make him phone me.’

John came to the door in his pyjamas; he looked terrible and told Charlie he had a bad hangover. Andrew wasn’t there, and he hadn’t seen him since earlier in the week. ‘Come in, though,’ he said. ‘If you want to make a cup of coffee, I’ll put some clothes on.’

Charlie was impressed by John’s flat, she’d always imagined all Andrew’s friends lived in squalor. When John re-emerged wearing jeans and a sweater, she handed him his coffee and asked about the handout.

‘He didn’t say much about it, just that it was to do with finding your father,’ he said. ‘Two replies came the other day. He said one was from a crank but the other sounded hopeful. All I know is that he was going to see someone in Shepherd’s Bush.’

‘When?’

John shrugged. ‘He didn’t say. He didn’t even show me the letters.’

Charlie asked if he knew of any other friends Andrew might be with. John shook his head. ‘It hit him very hard when you packed him in. So I couldn’t see him going off to a party and getting wasted knowing you were coming back this weekend. Is his scooter back at the pub?’

‘No. Carol said he went off on it after the lunchtime session yesterday.’

‘Well, that rules out him going home to his folks, or anywhere further than fifteen or so miles,’ John replied, scratching his head. ‘He’d go by train if it was further than that.’

Charlie walked dejectedly back to the pub, she didn’t know what to think. One side of her mind was telling her he was with another girl, the other side said that was improbable given that both Carol and John had said he was eagerly awaiting her return. He couldn’t phone Rita because he didn’t know her number. What if he’d had an accident on his scooter and he was lying in hospital somewhere?

Back in the pub Carol pooh-poohed the idea of an accident. ‘We’d have heard by now,’ she said. ‘I doubt very much that he’d go out without any identification on him, he’s the type that has his cheque-book, student union card and the works on him. Why don’t you go up to his room and look around and see if you can find his diary or something? I don’t like to poke around myself, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you doing it.’

Andrew’s room was exactly the way it was when Charlie last saw it over a month ago. Crumpled bedcovers, odd dirty socks lying on the floor along with his plimsolls, the poster from
Easy Rider
with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on their Harley Davidsons, still with one corner flapping in the breeze. Even the candle she’d stuck in a straw-covered Chianti bottle was still there.

His collection of books stacked on the chest of drawers were a pointer to his diverse interests, everything from textbooks on electronics to steamy paperbacks, then Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World
, Salinger’s
Catcher in the Rye
and a biography of Winston Churchill. A carefully arranged montage of photographs showed his affection for his family and old friends and his sentimentality about nights out he’d shared with her was apparent in a batch of programmes, ticket stubs and even beer coasters from various pubs.

It was the narrow bed that sent a pang through her heart, remembering all the times they’d made love on it on Saturday afternoons. She could recall stiffening each time she heard footsteps outside on the landing and even Andrew’s assurances that the door was locked couldn’t quite allay her fears that someone might burst in. She could almost hear his whispered tender words as they lay entwined afterwards and his promises he would love her forever.

One Sunday evening when he wasn’t working there had been a summer storm and they’d sat by the window and watched forked lightning illuminating the rain-lashed Heath opposite. This was the tiny, somewhat grubby sanctuary they withdrew to as often as possible. It was here he told her he loved her for the first time, here they made love for the first time, and here she had her first orgasm. She remembered so clearly how she felt after it, the rush of emotion, the wonder and the conviction she’d become a woman at last.

She picked up an abandoned tee-shirt from the bed and sniffed it. It still held a faint whiff of Brut aftershave, and the poignant smell was one she recognized as one which often clung to her skin after bouts of love-making. As she held it to her cheek, tears welled up in her eyes. Carol, Stan and John might think he was off somewhere sleeping off a hangover. She knew better. A sixth sense told her he was in some sort of danger.

Chapter Sixteen

Charlie was up in Andrew’s room for some time. She found his diary, but the only entry for the previous day merely said 3.00 Shepherd’s Bush. For today, however, he had drawn a heart with the words
Charlie’s coming home
inside it. Firm evidence, she thought, that he wouldn’t disappear intentionally.

His home telephone number was in the front of the diary, but she was loath to rush into phoning his mother just yet. Then she found a notebook under the edge of his bed.

She might have just shoved it back imagining he was trying his hand at writing a play, for the first thing she read was: ‘Alf – fruit and veg stall. 60ish. ex-bookie’s runner’. But as she read on she realized this wasn’t a fictional character, but someone he’d interviewed in Soho.

When she got to ‘Spud’, the ex-boxer, and discovered this man not only drank in the Lotus Club but knew her father and Sylvia, she felt elated. But Andrew’s notes were too cryptic to follow, many names mentioned by ‘Alf’ being repeated. But, ‘Didn’t know DeeDee’ and ‘Holland’ seemed to be of some importance to him because he’d underlined them. She wished he’d been more specific.

The next two pages were about ‘Angie’. Judging by her potted history, from seamstress in Charing Cross Road in the early Fifties to finally ending up working as a prostitute in Soho, Andrew had spent some time with her.

Charlie had the feeling he’d liked this woman, even though his description – forty-plus, bleached blonde, blowsy, with missing teeth – sounded appalling. He’d even mentioned she had three children and her home address in Mornington Crescent.

His notes then went on to a list, clearly things Angie had told him which were particularly relevant. She knew both Jin and Sylvia. Worked at the club for a while. At the club on the night of Charlie’s birth. Sylvia was the best stripper, better than any of the trained dancers. Said police came looking for Jin two years ago. Heard from a friend he’d been killed in Holland. DeeDee got her the sack.

The part about Holland made her turn back to the notes on Spud. She thought if two people had both specified the same place there had to be at least a grain of truth in it.

But when she saw the last underlined item on Angie’s page, ‘DeeDee calls herself Miss Dexter now’, her elation turned to a chill.

During her stay in York Charlie had thought carefully about everything Rita had told her and she’d decided that Rita was probably letting her imagination run away with her, thinking DeeDee and Daphne Dexter were the same woman. It seemed too far-fetched, even a little hysterical. But now, faced with this confirmation, she was stunned.

Andrew had written a few footnotes at the bottom of the page. ‘Angie described Miss Dexter as an octopus with a tentacle in everything. Doesn’t know where she is now. Refused to discuss her further. Afraid of repercussions.’

The only other thing of interest in the room was a badly written and misspelled letter from someone called Julie. Charlie thought it was almost certainly the one John said was from a crank. As he had said Andrew had received two letters, and she couldn’t find the second one, it seemed likely the appointment he had in Shepherd’s Bush was with the sender of the second. She was just about to go back down to the bar when she spotted his
A to Z
of London lying on top of the pile of books.

Andrew had once joked that London’s
A to Z
was his bible, and she’d often seen him marking places he had to go to with a small cross. Turning to the Shepherd’s Bush page, she scanned it quickly. There were three crosses on that page, one on the junction of Askew and Starfield Roads, one in Hammersmith Road and one in a tiny turning off the Goldhawk Road called Tittmus Street.

‘Damn you, Andrew,’ she said aloud. ‘How am I supposed to guess which one you went to?’

Charlie went back downstairs with Andrew’s notes and the
A to Z
in her handbag. Carol was busy behind the bar but she looked up as Charlie came in. ‘Any luck?’ she called out.

Apart from the fact that Carol was rushed off her feet, and probably would remain so until closing time, Charlie had already made up her mind that it wouldn’t be a good idea to try to explain anything she’d found upstairs. Andrew might turn up, and if he did he wouldn’t be pleased to discover his private business had been bandied around.

‘I’ve found his mother’s telephone number,’ Charlie said, handing over a piece of paper with it written down, along with her own. ‘I’m going to see a friend of his now, then I’ll go on home. If you do hear anything, could you ring me?’

‘I’m quite sure he’ll be back this evening, so I won’t attempt to phone his mum before that,’ Carol said. She didn’t look unduly troubled, perhaps because she’d been through this kind of absenteeism with other staff before. ‘Andrew’s normally a sensible lad, so I’m sure there’s a very good reason he hasn’t phoned in. So stop worrying about him. I’ll get him to ring you the moment he comes in.’

Half an hour later Charlie was in Mornington Crescent climbing the stairs of a dismal block of council flats. The flats were relatively new, built in the early Sixties, but the lift was out of order and the stairs were rubbish-strewn, stinking of urine and stale vomit. From every direction her ears were bombarded with noise: children running up and down the concrete landings, loud music, people yelling, babies screaming. She was just stepping out on to Angie’s landing when a small group of young louts came hurtling by her, pushing her hard against the concrete balustrade. She thought it must be a nightmare to live in such a place. Even looking down from the landing there was nothing to cheer her, just a view of many more huge tower blocks identical to this one, and bald, brown grass in between.

A little girl of about eight answered the door at number 140; she was a skinny blonde with blue eyes and a slight squint. She smiled shyly and revealed her front teeth were missing.

‘Could I speak to your Mummy?’ Charlie asked.

The girl didn’t go back into the flat, but yelled to her mother from the door. Seconds later a woman appeared in the narrow hall, cigarette in hand, a questioning expression on her face.

Although Andrew’s description of this woman had made her sound like a stereotyped ageing prostitute, to Charlie’s surprise she looked no different to any other working-class mother. Her hair was in rollers, she wore no makeup, and her stretch ski-pants, slippers and shirt were comfortingly ordinary.

‘I’m very sorry to call on you like this,’ Charlie said. ‘But I’m looking for my boyfriend Andrew Blake. I know he spoke to you just recently because I found your address among his things and I hoped you might know something which might help me to find him. He’s gone missing, you see.’

‘Whatcha mean, gone missing?’ the woman said, staring hard at Charlie. ‘Two days, three, or longer?’

‘He went out yesterday afternoon to see someone, and he didn’t go back to the pub where he works last night,’ Charlie said. She felt nervous faced with the woman’s hostile stare. ‘I know that’s not long, but it’s a bit strange. You see, he’s always very reliable.’

The woman didn’t speak immediately, just drew deeply on her cigarette and frowned at Charlie. ‘You look familiar,’ she said at length, then quite suddenly and unexpectedly chuckled. ‘I know! You gotta be Jin Weish’s daughter. So that’s why Andrew wanted to know all that stuff about his club! I thought it were a bit funny. Well I never!’

Charlie blushed. Her Chinese appearance was unusual enough to focus anyone’s mind very quickly, but she hadn’t for one moment expected that someone who knew her father some eighteen years ago would instantly connect that she was his daughter. Yet it pleased her; judging by the warmth of the woman’s smile, she must have liked Jin and known him quite well.

‘You’re pretty quick,’ she said admiringly. ‘I
am
Charlie Weish. Can you spare me a few moments?’

‘Of course I can, ducks,’ Angie said, then taking a step nearer to Charlie she whispered, ‘But just mind what you say in front of the kids.’

Once inside the living room Charlie’s nervousness vanished. It wasn’t the kind of squalid place she’d expected, but clean, bright and very homely. The little girl was playing with a Barbie doll on the floor, a boy of about eleven who also had blond hair was doing a jigsaw at the table by the window.

‘This is Tina, and that’s Karl,’ Angie said. ‘There’s Keith too but he’s out playing football. He’s fifteen and you can’t keep them in at that age.’

Charlie sensed by that statement that Angie did her best for her children, and warmed to her. Before saying anything more she knelt down by Tina and admired her doll, then went over to Karl and told him she loved jigsaws too.

‘Your mummy used to know my parents a long time ago,’ she said, ruffling his hair. ‘So I hope you don’t mind me butting in this afternoon.’

‘Of course they don’t,’ Angie said. ‘Come out in the kitchen with me while I make some tea, love, we can ’ave a chat there.’

They went into the kitchen. Angie put the kettle on and then sat down opposite Charlie at the table. ‘Now, before we go any further,’ she said sternly, ‘suppose you start by telling me the real reason Andrew asked me all those questions.’

Faced with someone who was clearly as sharp as razors, Charlie saw no point in prevaricating. She stated simply that she and Andrew had wanted to know the truth about Jin’s disappearance and then went on to explain the events of two years earlier.

Angie looked stricken as she heard about Sylvia’s legs being crushed by the men. When Charlie finally reached the point of her mother’s suicide, she wiped a tear from her eye. ‘I’m
so
sorry, love.’ Reaching out she took Charlie’s hand and patted it comfortingly between her two. ‘That’s just about the worst thing I’ve ever heard. But I ’ave to say right now, same as I told Andrew, I did ’ear a rumour that your dad got done in, in ‘Olland. I really ’ope that ain’t true for your sake, but to my mind that’s far more likely than ’im running off with another woman. Your dad weren’t the kind to do that, and he wouldn’t run from trouble either.’